"SMMB" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...
Quoted message said:"Carl Fogel" <[email hidden]> a écrit dans le message de :
"]news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:Dear Tom,
My MawlRat bicycle needs no over-elaborate Teutonic machinery, with onomatopoeic names:
"Schlumpf! goes the front transmission, collapsing and causing the rear hub to perform a
disastrous rohl-off."
I'd be curious to know how badly or how well the initial preparation was. What did you have to
adjust, etc., to feel secure before really taking it out.
Dear Sandy,
My initial preparation began with calling WatMarl and asking the lady who answered for the bicycle
department, which flummoxed her. She was relieved when I suggested trying the sporting goods
department, whose stalwart clerk assured me that there were $50 15-speed bicycles for sale and
seemed puzzled when I asked how long it would take to put one together--ya just roll 'em up to the
checkout stand, they're already assembled.
At the store, I found three fine examples of China's answer to the Trek OCLV posing shyly on the
upper rack. Only one had a manual attached, so I heaved it down, rolled it around, and found that
the front tire went bump, possibly because the soggy chunk of thick rubber had been resting and
deforming against the rack for too long.
Rejecting it like a beauty queen with a pimple on the end of her nose, I stuck a pitchfork into the
next bike and hoisted it down from the upper reaches of the barn. This one's seat was noticeably
dusty, indicating an even longer sojourn on the display rack, but its tires so rolled smoothly that
I forgave it for still having one of those round plastic shipping tabs on one side of its rear axle
(I'm not sure whether "Consumer Reports" would call this a sample defect.)
At home, I introduced the gigantic Schrrader valve tires to Mr. Air Compressor and settled for 55
harsh psi, favoring ease of pedalling over the comfort offered by 40 psi. While stuffing air into
the tires, I gave the axle bolts a tug and found them nicely snugged down.
Then I got on it and rode off. The silly thing surprised me by how easily it pedalled, but it felt
much smaller than my touring bike, despite its impressive weight.
A sensible fellow would have promptly turned around, returned to the garage, and continued with pre-
ride preparations, but instead I rode two blocks over to where a narrow road descends a short, steep
s-bend gully to the Arkansas river and rolled down it to the river, hitting what felt like 30 mph, a
bit slower than the usual 35 mph on my touring bike.
I figured out how to work handle-bar mounted shifters, put it in low gear, trudged back up the hill,
and went back to pre-race preparation.
The chief problem was that the bike is really meant for boys about the size that I was at fourteen
(the range is 10-17 years of age). An allen key loosened the handlebar stem and let me raise it a
few inches. An adjustable wrench let me slide the seat further back on its rails. The seat post is
the old-fashioned necked-down kind, so I pulled it out and compared it to ancient seat posts in a
box of odds and ends. One of my old posts was the same size (from God knows what), but several
inches longer, so I popped it into the bike after slathering grease on it, raised it to the limit
mark, and put the seat back on it.
Then I played on it for half an hour under the streetlight. It's much easier to balance standing
still than my touring bike, but not as easy as my fondly remembered 5-speed Schwinn from 1968,
partly because I'm old and out of practice and partly because of the narrow little handlebars.
While balancing, I noticed that the raised stem seemed to flex a bit when I strained on it. I expect
that Chalo Colina notices structural flex like this if he presses the buttons on his speedometer
carelessly.
Adding the speedometer was the biggest chore. I used a spare that I keep ready to replace the
speedometer on my touring bike (they cost about $13 and die every few years). The elephantine front
forks (think of a pair of tusks) required the biggest zip ties that I had handy, crude padding, and
mounting the sensor magnet on the inside of the spoke-crossing, next to the hub.
Propping it upside down on a pair of 2x4's, I admired its wheels. The rims are much narrower than
the tires. Using a KMart spoke wrench, I pretended to true the rims, soothing them with half-
remembered passages from "The Bicycle Wheel." There was perhaps an eighth of an inch of side wobble
before I started, and arguably less when I finished. The trick is to concentrate on the rim and to
ignore the fearsome rubber treads, which project sideways and may well be staggered, much like the
teeth on a well-set saw.
While there's no actual data supporting the spoke squeezing stress-relief theory, I gave all the
spokes a friendly grope. None of them broke or seemed to resent the familiarity.
Given my size, I feel that the seat-post substitution is within UCI rules. The effect of my wheel-
truing is notoriously open to question. By evil coincidence, I'd broken my second drive-side spoke
of the year on my touring bike that afternoon, something that I didn't mention to my new bicycle.
(Doctors aren't required to mention that the previous patient died, so I feel reasonably ethical.)
The first real ride went fine yesterday. Unfortunately, it began to rain last night, turned to snow,
and is now a few inches deep, so I may not go riding today. On the other hand, I rode to school as a
boy on days like this, so I may sneak off, since the roads are just wet.
Carl Fogel
